DIOGENES: In Search Of An Honest Politician!

DIOGENES invites you to pull up a chair on this rainy day and read
posts from around the world.
The writing may lean to the right...but that's the way Diogenes wants it!
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but Diogenes rarely changes his! WELCOME!

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Barack Obama: America’s Marquis de Sade

As the pain from Barack Obama’s daily attacks on our freedom builds it is important to keep several things in mind.
For example, today’s headline: Internal Government Email: Make Sequester Cuts As Painful As Possible Obama is the one who proposed the sequester in the first place: White House Admits (Third Time) President Obama Fibbed On Sequester.
Obama is the one who promised to veto any attempt to remove the sequester cuts: Video: Obama Promises to Veto Attempts to Remove “Painful” Sequester Cuts. Obama was given an opportunity to select the cuts himself: New GOP sequester plan: Let Obama decide what to cut.
Obama allowed DHS to release 2,000 illegal aliens during the month of February (2013) in anticipation of the sequester cuts happening: AP: 2,000 illegals released by DHS, Not 500. Keep in mind, current Obama illegal alien deportation policy is to only incarcerate and deport REPEAT and VIOLENT OFFENDERS only!
Obama Refuses to Deport Illegal Aliens BEFORE They Commit Vicious Crimes. DHS is also planning to release 3,000 more during the month of March: DHS Released 2,000 Illegal Immigrants, Plans to Release 3,000 More in March. Finally, Obama is the one who signed it into law when he had the ability to veto the bill.
To recap, Obama: created the problem; prevented the problem from being solved; declined the chance to minimize the problem; released 2,000 repeat offender and/or violent illegal aliens before the problem became a problem; passed the problem into law instead of vetoing it; and is now making sure (behind the scenes) that the problem is every bit as painful as it possibly could be.
How does it feel to know that your President is willing to do all of the above, at the expense of the nation…..

Liberty’s Obamacare Challenge Provides Glimmer of Hope

In 1919, back when the United States was a constitutional republic, Congress passed a child labor law imposing a 10 percent excise tax on companies that violated it.

A North Carolina furniture maker challenged the law and won. In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture that although child labor laws have a noble purpose, the means – Congress using taxing power as a penalty – was unconstitutional.

This was before Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing threat in1937 ended the Supreme Court’s resistance to grandiose expansions of federal power. The child labor issue, by the way, was resolved when states enacted laws prohibiting exploitation.

The Drexel decision resurfaced as precedent last year at the Supreme Court in National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sibelius. That’s where the Roberts court upheld the individual mandate to buy health insurance as an indirect “tax,” and thus upheld Obamacare as constitutional.

The Court ruled that Congress can’t make people buy a product, but that it can tax people who choose not to buy it. Yes, it’s as wacky as the 1942 Wickard v. Filburn ruling, in which a farmer was fined under interstate commerce regulations for raising grain for his own cows. And you wonder how the federal government got so big?

In the Obamacare case, the majority justified the “tax” ploy by saying that the individual mandate didn’t rise to the level of a “punitive penalty” as rejected in Drexel.

The Roberts court also ruled that the employer mandate to provide employee health insurance could not be justified under the Taxing and Spending Clause that the court used to justify the individual mandate, because it involves a severe penalty like the one that Drexel struck down.

This brings us to a glimmer of hope that the Court will right the massive wrong of finding Obamacare constitutional. They can do this by ruling for Liberty University, which has sued to overturn the employer mandate on religious freedom grounds. The independent Christian college has several reasons for challenging the employer mandate, but it boils down to the fact that the penalty is so severe that it would bankrupt the college.

In January 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an order implementing Obamacare by requiring employers that have 50 or more employees to provide “minimum essential coverage” for employees and dependents. The “minimum” includes abortifacients, contraceptives and sterilization. After a public uproar, HHS gave Catholic hospitals and faith-based colleges like Liberty a year to figure out how to violate their consciences. Not even that was offered to businesses like the craft chain Hobby Lobby, whose Christian owners are also refusing to comply and are challenging the law.

In an amicus brief filed on March 6 at the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, American Civil Rights Union General Counsel Peter Ferrara notes that:

“If Liberty University complies with the employer mandate...it will violate fundamental religious beliefs that life begins at conception, and that abortion is consequently murder of pre-born children in their mothers' wombs. The PPACA consequently mandates that the University violate its religious beliefs.”

Founded in 1971 by the late evangelist Jerry Falwell, Liberty is the largest Christian college in America, with 12,000 on-campus students and another 62,000 pursuing degrees online. In fact, it’s the largest private, nonprofit university in the country. Mr. Ferrara’s brief explains why the university’s refusal to embrace Caesar’s immoral mandate would be crushingly expensive.

If even a single employee finds the insurance “unaffordable,” defined as when an employee’s portion of the premium exceeds 9.5 percent of his or her household income, fines would be imposed based on all university employees.

“An employer mandate violation can very easily result under the PPACA,” Mr. Ferrara explains. “A family of four with a single income-earner will easily make the employer’s coverage for his entire work force ‘unaffordable.’ … If the health insurance for each person in the household costs only $2,500, then the single income earner would need to make over $100,000 to meet the PPACA employer mandate requirements for an ‘affordable’ plan. These penalties will quickly become “massive,” even “destructive,” which qualifies them as unconstitutional punitive penalties rather than permissible taxes under Drexel Furniture.”

Here’s more from the brief: "In 2012, Liberty University employed 6,900 people, with net claims for its self-insured health insurance of $14,214,000. Yet Liberty University would be fined $20,700,000 ($3,000 times 6,900) if only one employee meets the 9.5 percent "unaffordable" criterion.

“That penalty would be on top of the additional penalty of $2,000 per employee ($13,800,000) that Liberty University would have to pay for providing coverage excluding abortifacients, for a total combined penalty of $34,500,000. That would be in addition to the $14,214,000 that Liberty University paid in claims for its health insurance coverage in 2012.”

Result? This would “tax or penalize Liberty University out of existence.”

For the same reasons of conscience cited by Liberty, the individual mandate is an unconstitutional violation of the freedom of religion, the brief contends.

Congress declined to include a severance clause, which would have left Obamacare in place if portions were declared unconstitutional. All parties agreed that without the mandate, the system would collapse. Without it, people would not buy insurance until they needed it.

“This Court should declare the employer mandate and individual mandate unconstitutional,” the ACRU’s brief concludes, “and, since those provisions are not severable, should declare the entire Act unconstitutional."

The Supreme Court will eventually hear this case. America’s health care system is hanging on a wing and a prayer.

Obama's Budget Abdication Breaks 92 Year Tradition

Barack Obama certainly enjoys the trappings and perks of the Office of President. The actual job of being President, however, doesn't seem to interest him. His desire to avoid being tied to any specifics of any proposal have caused him to do what no modern President has done. He is the first President since 1921 to abdicate the task of drafting a federal budget to Congress.
Congress established the modern budget process in 1921. Under the terms of the law, the President is required to submit a budget for the federal government no later than the first Monday in February. Obama has only met this statutory deadline once during his Presidency, a record worse than any modern President. Obama has missed the deadline 4 times. Prior to him, all the Presidents back to 1921 together missed the deadline twice.
Pentagon officials recently advised the House Armed Services Committee that the President's budget wouldn't be delivered until April 8th, a 9 week delay that trumps any previous delay. Worse, though, the long delay means that Congress will initiate its own debate on the budget, without input from the Executive Branch.
On Tuesday, Rep. Paul Ryan unveiled the House GOP budget proposal. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats will unveil their first budget proposal in 4 years. By the time Obama gets around to submitted his mandated proposal, Congress will have had almost a month to deliberate on its proposals.
As we've seen throughout his tenure, Obama prefers lofty rhetoric over the day-to-day give-and-take required to enact legislation. He spoke in general, focus-tested, words about ObamaCare, the stimulus, financial services regulation and a host of other issues, while leaving the gritty, horse-trading work to Congress.

ObamaCare's Rosa Parks

She is the perfect symbol of everything that is wrong, immoral and corrupt with ObamaCare. At the very heart of her courageous battle against the city of Detroit lies one simple question; who “owns” the individual citizen? Under ObamaCare, absolutely every human action, or non-action, can and will be argued to have a direct cost to society, based on the actions or non-actions potential impact on healthcare costs. Because our federal government has now claimed financial responsibility for every American’s healthcare costs, they will also claim total dominion over all citizen’s actions and non-actions. All food, drink, sleep, medicine, exercise, non-exercise, “high risk” activities, education…absolutely every behavior will be reviewed, analyzed and “justifiably” regulated under the catch-all ”impact on our healthcare costs” excuse. Look no further than New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s (@MikeBloomberg on Twitter) insatiable lust to control the salt and sugar intake levels of “his subjects.” Bloomberg perfectly highlights how quickly ObamaCare can and will spiral into a cesspool of stupidity. And tyranny. With full implementation of ObamaCare, you will no longer own yourself.
Enter Maryanne Godboldo.
Please, I pray you, watch this powerful 4-minute video that highlights America’s future when an imperial federal government muscles control from “greedy” doctors and “evil” insurance companies. And puts control into the hands of an “omnipotent” federal agency.

White smoke

Tax cheat Charlie Rangel: ‘Capitalism By Itself Is Not What American Values Are All About’!

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) took a swipe at American capitalism on Tuesday amid a discussion with MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts about the Catholic Church’s ongoing conclave to determine who will be the next Pope. Rangel declared that the church needs a new pontiff in order to continue their global charitable works and that Americans support that charity because Americans do not value “capitalism by itself.”

Makin' us look bad?

Hackers reveal financial records of 1st Lady, VP and celebrities!

Hackers have revealed, and continue to release, the alleged financial records of various US politicians and celebrities including the First Lady Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Kim Kardashian and even Donald Trump.

According to RT, the website revealing the information has a .su domain, which was a country code used for a short period in the USSR, just before the Soviet Union collapsed. However, RT explains that the website is not, in fact, Russian. On finding a Twitter account linked from the hacker's website, the tweets are apparently in badly machine-translated Russian.

At the top of the home page the website quotes the TV show, Dexter, saying "If you believe that God makes miracles, you have to wonder if Satan has a few up his sleeve.”

Reportedly, TMZ, the gossip website, was the first to report the leak on Monday.

The website lists the following, with links which supposedly take you to the information.

The first is a link to information on First Lady Michelle Obama, on which the hacker states "Blame your husband, we still love you, Michelle [heart]."

No reason is given for the hacking, but it is noted that while the hacker appears to like the First Lady, and displays an image saying "I [heart] Michelle", the other government people and celebrities are all represented by rather unflattering photos, as per Ms Clinton on the right.

The webpage for the LAPD Chief, Charlie Beck, displays the following tag: #YouCantCornerTheDorner, apparently in reference to the former police officer and alleged cop-killer, Christopher Dorner, recently killed after a police chase, together with a photo of a woman protesting police brutality.

Britney Spears' webpage has an image of her crying, together with sound of an impassioned plea by a friend or fan to leave poor Britney alone.

Both RT and AP apparently attempted to contact the listed celebrities, but without success. They either declined to comment or could not be contacted.

The LAPD will investigate leaks of personal information for celebrities living in the city, should they require it. Apparently so far the FBI has declined to state whether they are investigating the leak of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s personal data.

Marijuana: A Gift of the Left to America’s Youth: CO and WA already having bad consequences!

Denver television station CBS4 reports that Colorado has seen a sharp spike in marijuana use among teenagers since voters passed Amendment 64 last November, legalizing recreational use of the drug. As described in The Economist, along with a Washington State measure also legalizing marijuana, Amendment 64 is “an electoral first not only for America but for the world.”
That means two American states are to the left of the Scandinavian countries, Holland, and every other liberal country regarding marijuana.
CBS4 quotes a number of local high-school students:
“I’ve seen a lot more people just walking down the street smoking (joints),” high-school student Irie Johnson said.
“In high school it has kind of gotten out of hand,” student Alaina Tanenbaum said.
According to the CBS4 report, based in part on data from a local drug-testing lab: “Experts say the test results show that children are getting higher than ever with alarming levels of THC, marijuana’s active ingredient, in their bodies.”
The massive increase in both the number of users and the amount of marijuana used by young people is precisely what I and many others predicted.
It was easy to foresee.
When something desirable is made easier to obtain, more people will obtain it. It is difficult to imagine an exception to this commonsense observation.
So legalizing marijuana is foolish because it leads to far more use of the drug and the availability of ever more potent forms. But the foolishness doesn’t end there. Equally foolish is that as a society we have made peace with marijuana while making war on tobacco. This has been a classic example of upside-down thinking; and we are reaping exactly what we have sown. We have produced a generation of young Americans who would never put a cigarette or cigar near their lips, but who increasingly get high on pot.
Yes, tobacco — specifically cigarettes — kills and marijuana doesn’t. But, if you’ll forgive the ultimate political incorrectness, young people would do much better in life if they smoked tobacco rather than weed.
First, tobacco doesn’t kill young people. When it kills, it generally kills much older adult people. Moreover, according to a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, if you stop smoking cigarettes by age 44, you will lose only one more year of life than a person who has never smoked.
Second, regular pot smokers increasingly tune out of life, becoming what are known as potheads, or, to put it bluntly, losers.
Third, as noted in the CBS4 report, “new studies that have been published say the risk of a car accident increases two-fold after someone consumes pot.” In other words, innocent human beings — sometimes whole families — are more likely to be maimed, paralyzed, and killed by pot smokers than by cigarette smokers.
For myriad reasons, then, I would far prefer my teenager indulge in cigarettes — not to mention cigars — than pot. Anyone who thinks that pot is less harmful to a teenager than tobacco is fooling himself — and his teenager.
If this is not obvious, ponder these questions: Would you rather your airplane pilot smoke pot or tobacco while flying? How would Britain have fared in World War II if Winston Churchill had smoked pot instead of cigars?
In terms of the effects of tobacco and pot on the smoker while smoking, there is simply no comparison between pot and tobacco.
What the Left has done to America’s youth in the last 40 or so years is so damaging as to be unforgiveable. They have ruined public-school education; left them with so much debt that they will likely be the first American generation to live in a fashion materially inferior to that of their parents; and robbed their innocence with sex-education classes, now beginning in kindergarten in Chicago and elsewhere. Now they are making marijuana available to more kids and in greater potency than ever before.
But they have left them with higher self-esteem.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.

Paul Ryan: The GOP Plan to Balance the Budget by 2023!

The goal can be reached, with no new taxes, while increasing spending 3.4% annually instead of the current 5%.
America's national debt is over $16 trillion. Yet Washington can't figure out how to cut $85 billion—or just 2% of the federal budget—without resorting to arbitrary, across-the-board cuts. Clearly, the budget process is broken. In four of the past five years, the president has missed his budget deadline. Senate Democrats haven't passed a budget in over 1,400 days. By refusing to tackle the drivers of the nation's debt—or simply to write a budget—Washington lurches from crisis to crisis.
House Republicans have a plan to change course. On Tuesday, we're introducing a budget that balances in 10 years—without raising taxes. How do we do it? We stop spending money the government doesn't have. Historically, Americans have paid a little less than one-fifth of their income in taxes to the federal government each year. But the government has spent more.
So our budget matches spending with income. Under our proposal, the government spends no more than it collects in revenue—or 19.1% of gross domestic product each year. As a result, we'll spend $4.6 trillion less over the next decade.
Our opponents will shout austerity, but let's put this in perspective. On the current path, we'll spend $46 trillion over the next 10 years. Under our proposal, we'll spend $41 trillion. On the current path, spending will increase by 5% each year. Under our proposal, it will increase by 3.4%. Because the U.S. economy will grow faster than spending, the budget will balance by 2023, and debt held by the public will drop to just over half the size of the economy.
Yet the most important question isn't how we balance the budget. It's why.

Aren't we enough?

Obama Reaching Out to Republicans a 'Joke,' Stunt for Media

An anonymous White House aide says that the president reaching out to Republicans is a "joke," a waste of time, and stunt for the media.
As Ron Fournier of National Journal reports:
Obama’s sudden burst of public outreach coincides with a drop in his approval ratings, noted first by Democratic pollsters advising the White House last week and now surfacing in a spate of public polls. This raises the uncomfortable question: Is this schmooze-a-thon a legitimate act of humility and leadership or a cynical public display?
I can’t answer that question because I don’t pretend to know Obama’s state of mind. I can tell you that some of his advisers are no more convinced that this strategy will work than they were a few days ago.
“This is a joke. We’re wasting the president’s time and ours,” complained a senior White House official who was promised anonymity so he could speak frankly. “I hope you all (in the media) are happy because we’re doing it for you.”

The rich pay majority of U.S. income taxes!

Many people think that the rich are able to weasel their way out of taxes, but they actually pay an overwhelming majority of the taxes in the United States.
What's more, their share of the tax burden is increasing. The top 10 percent of taxpayers paid over 70% of the total amount collected in federal income taxes in 2010, the latest year figures are available, according to the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank. That's up from 55% in 1986.
The remaining 90% bore just under 30% of the tax burden. And 47% of all Americans pay hardly anything at all -- a fact that got Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney into political hot water last year.
"There's been a huge myth created that the rich aren't paying anything," said William McBride, the Tax Foundation's chief economist. "The rich pay a much higher rate than the poor."
These numbers may not tell the whole story though. The tax code is getting more progressive, said Roberton Williams, a senior economist at the centrist Tax Policy Center. In 1986 there were just two tax rates -- 15% and 28%. Now there are seven income tax brackets, going from a low of 10% to a high of nearly 40%.
While taxes on investment income have declined a bit since 1986, incentives like child care and income tax credits for the poor have been greatly expanded.
But the rich are able to take advantage of tax breaks too. That's why Williams said there's a popular notion that the wealthy are somehow cheating the tax man. In fact, the Tax Policy Center found last year that there about 4,000 households with incomes over $1 million that were not paying anything at all.

Where your money goes: What the fed and local “public servants” pull down in salaries and pensions!

It’s that time of year again. Like millions of Americans — some 50 percent of tax filers, in fact — I am spending many hours assembling various forms and bits of paper that I will turn over to my accountant, who will then go away to add, subtract, depreciate, amortize, deduct, allow, and expense, presenting us in the end with a long and (to me) unintelligible document, a hefty bill for his services, and pulse-rattling totals to be sent to the U.S. Treasury and the treasuries of various states.
Here’s a question. What do you suppose those governmental agencies do with all that dough? Aircraft carriers, I know, are expensive, and I don’t begrudge the federal government a dime for that sort of expense. And the president, I know, must have his vacations. The Daily Caller reported that taxpayers spent $1.4 billion on Obama and his family last year. I can’t say I am thrilled by that, but when you have a federal budget (not, of course, that we have actually had a budget under Obama) of nearly $4 trillion, $1.4 billion might seem almost reasonable. Almost. (OK, it really doesn’t.)

But what about the rest of the dough? Put the federal spedning to one side for a moment. What about the trillions upon trillions that the state and local governments spend? Where’s that go? One of the most irritating aspects of the carnival of fiscal irresponsibility we’ve been subjected to in recent decades is the fact that no matter how much money we send to our masters in Washington and in our state capitals and local bursaries, they always spend more, a lot more, than they get. The $16-point-whatever trillion federal debt gets loads of attention, but what about the billions upon billions in debt that various states have racked up? California is essentially bankrupt, ditto Illinois, New York, and many other states. My own state of Connecticut is in a bad way, but why? The population of the state has been stable these past few decades, yet expenditures, and debt, have skyrocketed. Why’s that?
It’s been tricky to answer such questions. Until now. A public-spirited chap called Adam Andrzejewski got fed up with the lack of governmental transparency and decided to do something about it. Hence his invaluable website Open the Books, a project of For the Good of Illinois, Inc., a non-partisan, non-profit organization founded by Mr. Andrzejewski in 2007. The goal of Open the Books is something that the Obama administration came to office promising but never delivered: transparency. Hence its motto: “Every dime. Online.”
They haven’t quite got there yet, but their database is a formidable thing, and if I were a government or state or municipal employee (or former employee) I would blush to browse through the records it has assembled. Take a look. While you’re waiting to find out how much more money you will have to send to the bureaucrats who live so well off your hard work, contemplate what the “public servants” in your neck of the woods pull down in salaries or pensions. Here are a few screen shots:
First, I asked for recent Connecticut state and local salaries.
Mr. Calhoun was a successful college athletic coach. I wonder if the taxpayers are happy about those many millions? Or how about the millions to various unnamed teachers in Avon, Canterbury, and elsewhere?
Then I thought I’d look at Illinois salaries. It’s good to be a dean in Illinois:
Illinois also seems to be a good place to retire if you are a “public servant.” Here is the beginning of a list of MONTHLY pension payments.
Not bad, eh? I mean not bad for the folks collecting on your money because various unions have the politicians in their pockets.
I hope that Open the Books will become more widely known. There is a trove of information there about the expenditures of every state, many localities, and the federal government. It is partly sobering, partly infuriating. Perhaps Mr. Andrzejewski will take up my idea and start a new not-for-profit called Throw The Bums Out.org.

Government Advertises for Nearly 2,600 New Jobs Since Sequestration

With Office of Management and Budget fact sheets in hand, President Obama warned of dire cutbacks and consequences should sequestration go into effect March 1.
The cuts happened, White House tours have been halted, and the administration swears it’s not overreacting to the bare-bones budget directive.
But in the days since the hammer of sequestration fell, the federal government is hiring anew.
A search tonight of the USA Jobs federal employment website, filtered to positions in the United States and posted over the past 10 days, yielded 2,596 results.
This includes 107 positions at the Department of Homeland Security, which has claimed cutbacks have resulted in everything from a more taxing security line at airports to the need to free illegal immigrant detainees.
Jobs included transportation security officers in rural areas, a library technician in Baltimore, a recreational boating safety specialist in Cleveland, natural hazards program specialists in Denton, Texas, and various program analyst positions in the D.C. area. Various six-figure supervisory jobs are also open.
One hundred and fifteen jobs have been posted since sequestration began for the Agriculture Department, which warned of Americans falling ill from tainted food due to short staffing should sequestration go into effect.
Jobs posted included soil technicians, a recreation forestry technician in Sedona, Ariz., a dairy grader in Winnsboro, Texas, an archaeologist in McCall, Idaho, and a social science analyst.
The highest number of job postings since sequestration went into effect is at the Department of Veterans Affairs, with 909 new openings at the time of publication. The OMB painted a grim picture of tens of thousands of homeless vets being returned to the streets due to the budget cuts.
As the OMB warned Indian tribes would lose nearly $130 million in funding from the Interior Department, 115 new jobs have been posted in the sequestration era including multiple park guides to stock up for the summer, a museum aide, plant technicians, and more.
And while the White House warned of hundreds of furloughed federal prosecutors and a thousand fewer criminal cases being brought to court each year, the Justice Department has 46 new job postings including a public affairs specialist for the U.S. Attorneys, a law librarian, a trial attorney, and a deputy chief for the civil rights division.
New job postings at random agencies include a six-figure IT specialist at the Railroad Retirement Board, an exhibition aid for the National Gallery of Art, an Albanian-language broadcaster, and a space-assignment technician at the National Archives.
The office of the president is advertising for a management analyst, with a salary of $51,630 to $97,333 per year, to provide “assistance, research, advice and consultation on a full scope of administrative, managerial and financial projects in support of the Office of Administration.” Relocation assistance is not included.
If anyone does want to complain about sequestration job losses, though, the Office of Personnel Management is hiring a customer service specialist for its call center.
Last week, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) wrote to Acting OMB Director Jeffrey Zients, noting that many nonessential federal job postings were still going up despite pressure on the office to warn agencies that hiring activity should be scrutinized in the face of sequestration.
On the first business day after sequestration, 606 new jobs were posted on the USA Jobs site.
“While some of these positions may be essential to the mission of the agency, others plainly are not,” Coburn wrote. “…According to OMB, the average annual salary for a government employee is around $76,000. This means that the average new hire equates to a one week furlough for 52 current government employees.”
Jobs found by Coburn on March 4 and highlighted in the letter to Zients included 23 openings that included “recreation” in the title and a historian for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
“While the Air Force may need leadership for its museums and history programs, and the USDA may need to keep its literature in order, those needs should take a back seat to the dire threat to public health and safety that some have claimed will result from sequestration,” Coburn wrote. “Canceling the opening for the librarian position at USDA could offset one week of furloughs for as many as 104 to 156 food inspectors.”

Pentagon halts production of drone, cyberwarfare medal amid backlash!

Associated Press

FILE: Undated: This image released by the Department of Defense shows the obverse view with ribbon of the newly announced Distinguished Warefare Medal. (AP)

The military has stopped production of a new medal for remote warfare troops -- drone operators and cyber warfighters -- as it considers complaints from veterans and lawmakers over the award, a government official said Tuesday.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered a review of the Distinguished Warfare Medal, which was to be awarded to troops who operate drones and use other technological skills to fight America's wars from afar. Announcement of the review is expected at a Pentagon news conference later Tuesday.
Lawmakers and veterans groups have complained that although troops can get the new medal for work far from the battlefield, it has been ranked above medals for those who served on the front line in harm's way, such as the Purple Heart given to wounded troops.
If the review agrees with that complaint about the medal, it would likely have to be renamed and new medals manufactured, the government official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
In ordering the new look at the medal, Hagel said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey would lead a review of how the medal is ranked among others -- where it is in what the military calls "the order of precedence" of the medal, according to talking points obtained by The Associated Press.
"In light of concerns about the medal's place in the order of precedence raised by veterans organizations and a number of members of Congress ... Secretary Hagel is going to work with" Dempsey, the service secretaries and the service chiefs to review the ranking, the memo said. He wants Dempsey to report back in 30 days.
There is a practical side to the rankings. There are grades of medals -- commendation, merit, distinguished -- that affect not only the name but promotions for those still serving in uniform. Each grade gives troops a certain number of points needed for promotions.
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the new medal last month, saying it was meant to recognize battlefield contributions in a world of changing warfare.
"I've seen firsthand how modern tools, like remotely piloted platforms and cyber systems, have changed the way wars are fought," Panetta said. "And they've given our men and women the ability to engage the enemy and change the course of battle, even from afar."
Over the last decade of war, remotely piloted Predator and Reaper drones have become a critical weapon to gather intelligence and conduct airstrikes against terrorists or insurgents around the world. They have been used extensively on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and northern Africa.
Over the same time, cyberattacks have become a growing national security threat, with Panetta and others warning that the next Pearl Harbor could well be a computer-based assault.
Officials said in announcing the medal last month that it would be the first combat-related award to be created since the Bronze Star in 1944. And they said that in recognition of the evolving 21st century warfare, the medal would be considered a bit higher in ranking than the Bronze Star, but lower than the Silver Star.
The Veterans of Foreign War and other groups say that ranking it ahead of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart is an injustice to those who served on the front-lines.
John Bircher, a spokesman for the Military Order of the Purple Heart, has said the veterans groups are not objecting to the medal -- just the ranking. He said some medals ranked ahead of the Purple Heart are achievement medals that can be earned outside of war time. What bothers many veterans is that the new Distinguished Warfare Medal appears be a war-time medal that trumps acts of valor, which he finds insulting.
The backlash to the Pentagon's announcement included an online petition to the White House signed by thousands of people. The petition called the medal "an injustice to those who served and risked their lives" and asked that it not be allowed to move forward as planned.

Lawmaker looks to rein in program after free cell phones sent to dead people!

WASHINGTON – Dead people don’t need cell phones.
That’s the message Rep. Tim Griffin of Arkansas wants to send Congress, after he says a controversial government-backed program that helps provide phones to low-income Americans ended up sending mobiles to the dead relatives of his constituents. Griffin has introduced a bill that targets the phone hand-out program, which has ballooned into a fiscal headache for the government.
“This program demands reform,” Griffin told FoxNews.com on Monday. “There is a lot of waste in it and we need to be asking ourselves, ‘Where do we draw the line? Do we give everybody an iPad next? A computer? Is that the role the federal government should be playing?’”
Griffin said the story of dead relatives receiving cell phones was relayed to him by constituents. He added: “I’ve also gotten calls from people who say their employees were bragging about having 10 phones.”
The program in question provides limited phone service to people on government assistance. Ideally, Griffin says he would like to get rid of the program created in the mid-80s altogether, but he knows he lacks the support to kill it -- and instead is asking Congress to scale it back. Griffin’s plan would get rid of cell phones and provide only landline service and phones.
Started in 1985, Lifeline program was created to make sure people with low income levels weren’t cut off from emergency services, job searches or communication with family members. The program is funded by charges that appear on monthly bills of every wireless and landline phone customer in the country. The money goes into a Universal Service Fund that pulls its revenues from fees that show up on most telephone bills as the “federal universal service charge.” The fees range but can go to $3.22 a month.

After closing the doors to public tours in an effort to save money, White House officials haven't yet said if sequester cuts will result in furloughs or layoffs for its senior staffers
...
In the field of energy and climate change alone, President Obama in 2012 employed three advisers making at least $100,000 -- though one has since left.
The president kept on staff a "deputy assistant" for energy and climate change, Heather Zichal, making $140,000; a "special assistant" for energy and environment, Nathaniel Keohane; and a "deputy director" for energy and climate change, Dan Utech.
Together, their salaries totaled over $370,000 last year

When the U.S. Senate this week takes up the continuing resolution to fund the federal government for the remainder of fiscal year 2013, Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Texas) will offer an amendment that will prohibit funding for the implementation of Obamacare during that period.

“I believe we will have a vote on this amendment and I have said I am willing to employ any procedural means necessary to ensure that we do get a vote on the amendment,” Cruz told reporters today.

Five Guys: Obamacare will boost burger prices [job losses because of Obamacare]

The fight over Obamacare, so far held at the 30,000-foot level, is about to hit home. The latest impact hot off the grill: prices of burgers and hot dogs at Five Guys, the national chain that started in Washington, are going to rise to cover the president's mandated insurance coverage.
"Any added costs are going to have to be passed on," said Mike Ruffer, a Five Guys franchise holder with eight of the popular restaurants in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C. area. He will need all the profits from at least one of his eight outlets just to cover his estimated added $60,000-a year in new Obamacare costs.
What's more, he's iced plans to build another three restaurants until after the administration explains the exact rules and penalties employers will face. The law's plan to have those available March 1 has been pushed back to October.
"I'm kind of in a holding pattern," said Ruffer, a former Marriott executive who added that many franchise owners are in a similar situation.
Ruffer was the star witness at a Monday Heritage Foundation seminar on the impact Obamacare will have on small businesses. He is typical of many: Because he has enough full time employees to activate the law, he faces either coughing up the money to provide health insurance or paying a fine of up to $3,000 per worker.
Ruffer initially thought he would escape the law because he created each restaurant as its own company. But the law doesn't recognize that distinction, so now he's trying to determine if he can fire enough workers, or cut enough hours, to slide out of the grasp of Obamacare.
He said that "scorched earth plan," however, would hurt his restaurants, so Ruffer is likely to either pay the fine or buy insurance. But spreading the costs over his basic menu of fries, drinks, burgers and hot dogs, could scare off customers, he worries. He said that the recent spike in gas prices cut into his profits since fewer people were stopping at his restaurants.
And the health care law isn't only going to hit Ruffer. He's quizzed his workers to ask if they understand that they will be fined if they don't get health insurance. Just one of 20 workers were aware of the $95 tax penalty that rises to $695 by 2016.

As Republican senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, and James Inhofe prepare to introduce a measure to defund Obamacare — and threaten to hold up a continuing resolution to fund the U.S. government if the measure is not given a vote — some conservatives are unhappy that the House, controlled by Republicans, did not do the same thing.
It wasn’t for lack of effort, at least on the part of some conservative Republicans. As the House prepared to consider its own version of the continuing resolution last week — it ultimately passed 267 to 151 — more than two dozen conservative GOP lawmakers signed on to an amendment that would have defunded Obamacare. They submitted the amendment and hoped it would receive a vote but were stymied when the House leadership declared that no amendments would be allowed.
“If that amendment had gone to the floor, far and above a majority of the conference would have voted for it,” said Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon, one of the supporters, in an interview Saturday. “I think everyone in the conference would have voted for it,” added Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis, another supporter.
Nevertheless, the Republican leadership did not allow the amendment to be considered. And that, Salmon, DeSantis, and other conservative Republicans believe, is a measure of the leadership’s uneasiness with continuing the legislative fight against Obamacare. Some Republicans — lawmakers who might have felt pressure to vote to defund Obamacare — believe privately that the fight is essentially over, and that the GOP should come to terms with the reality of national health care.

HANGIN'

The Bright Side

Why the FEC Won't Catch the Next Jesse Jackson Jr.

Reviewing the charging documents in the case against former Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., D-Ill., it is impossible not to wonder how he got away with stealing his campaign funds for so long. For a period of at least seven years, Jackson misused his campaign funds to buy personal items, including a $40,000 Rolex watch, mink capes, mounted elk heads and Michael Jackson memorabilia, among other things.

Part of the problem is that since 2001, the Federal Election Commission — the agency charged with monitoring campaign finances — has specifically permitted candidates to use campaign funds to pay family members. What led the FEC to countenance this? Ironically enough, it was a request Jackson made.

In June 2001, Jackson sought a legal opinion from the FEC as to whether he could hire his wife, Sandi Jackson, as a consultant to provide fundraising and administrative support.

2013 Chevrolet Volt

Page 9-19: "It can be dangerous to leave the vehicle with the propulsion system running. It could overheat and catch fire. It is dangerous to get out of the vehicle if the shift lever is not fully in P (Park) with the parking brake firmly set. The vehicle can roll. Do not leave the vehicle when the propulsion system is running. If you have left the propulsion system running, the vehicle can move suddenly. You or others could be injured. To be sure the vehicle will not move, even when you are on fairly level ground, always set the parking brake and move the shift lever to P (Park). See Shifting Into Park on page 9-19."